Wednesday, May 8, 2013

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Sunday, May 5, 2013

Chapter
One

Second thoughts don’t belong in a boxing
ring.

Jeremy Kater
held his ground even as his head snapped back beneath the gloved fist of the
man he’d hired to teach him the basics of boxing. What had seemed like an
essential component of his transformation was proving to be more painful than
he’d anticipated.

He had just
raised his gloves to try and block the next hit to his face when his opponent
took advantage of the movement and punished his unprotected abdomen with
enthusiasm. Ray Denton was a legend in the world of boxing. Not only had he
reigned as the world champion heavyweight boxer for several years during his
youth, but after his retirement he had gone on to train more than one fighter
who had won the same title.

You’d think that
a man like that would be happy to give beginner lessons for a generous fee.
However, convincing Ray to work with an amateur had been no easy feat. But
Jeremy wasn’t a quitter. He’d countered every refusal with an offer of more
compensation until he’d reached a number that Ray hadn’t been able to dismiss.

Years of playing
Mighty Punch-Out on his vintage game console hadn’t prepared him for the
reality of a trained professional. Nor had his one actual fistfight during his
senior year of high school given him any skill when it came to breaching the
defenses of the man who was currently dancing around him, easily blocking his
punches, and landing almost every one of his physical rebuttals.

Another swing,
another miss, another failed attempt to block what felt like a sledgehammer to
his skull. Jeremy shook his head to clear it. The room spun and tilted. He took
a step back to steady himself.

I probably should have waited until after
the first lesson to pay him, Jeremy thought. At least he would have had incentive to make sure I survived it.

He’d expected
his first lesson to include agility work, maybe some shadowboxing. He’d read
how boxers used uppercut bags and speed bags to work on resistance. He’d even
looked forward to an introductory light sparring match.

This was something
entirely different.

The next
well-placed hit sent Jeremy to his knees. He sat back on his heels, braced
himself, and gasped for air. Ray’s face twisted with satisfaction, and Jeremy saw
the ugly truth in his eyes.

He wants me to fail.

He thinks I don’t belong here.

He’s wrong.

Regaining his
footing, Jeremy adjusted his headgear, clamped his teeth down on his mouth bit,
raised his hands, and swung, a bit wildly, at his opponent. But Ray was too
fast for him. Two quick jabs and a cross sent Jeremy stumbling backward against
the rope of the ring. Whatever Herculean strength he’d hoped would surface in
response to this beating was sadly absent. Even the sting of the blows lessened
as they became more severe and his body weakened. His new challenge was no
longer his opponent but a growing numbness.

Before he could
pull himself off the ropes, a blur of feminine fury flew past him and took a
protective stance in front of him.

Jeisa. Barely as tall as the boxer’s
shoulders and chicly dressed in a sleeveless black jumper, oversized
sunglasses, and high heels, his image consultant looked ridiculously out of
place in the ring. She flipped her thick, dark mane of hair over one shoulder
and waved a hand aggressively at Ray, who seemed momentarily surprised into inaction.
Her normally light Brazilian accent thickened as she said, “Stop! He’s had
enough.”

Jeremy pushed
himself off the ropes. Although he appreciated her concern, he didn’t want her
in the ring. This was between Ray and him. Jeisa may have been able to advise
him in many other areas of his ongoing transformation, but not in this one.

Jeisa stepped
closer to the boxer and snarled, “And you are a poor example of a trainer.”

As Ray’s jaw
tightened at her evaluation, Jeremy quickly intervened. He put a gloved hand on
one of Jeisa’s shoulders and turned her around gently. “I told you not to come,
Jeisa. This doesn’t involve you.”

Jeisa spun fully
on Jeremy. She gripped his arm and said urgently, “If you want self-defense
classes, I can sign you up for karate or something less violent.”

In a mocking
tone, Ray said, “You should listen to your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my
girlfriend.” This is for Alethea.

The trainer’s
eyebrows lifted as he assessed Jeisa for a second time. He winked at her and
drawled, “Then maybe she’ll be mine.”

Something in the
man’s tone made Jeremy straighten to his full height. A rush of adrenaline
seared through him. He met and held Ray’s eyes. Without glancing down at Jeisa,
Jeremy ordered, “Jeisa, get out of the ring.”

“But . . .” she
said.

“Get out.”

With obvious
reluctance, Jeisa slid between the ropes back to the area around the ring.
“Fine,” she said, “kill yourself if you want to. You’re right—I shouldn’t have
come. I’m leaving.” But she didn’t. He knew she wouldn’t.

A dark emotion
he didn’t take the time to identify surged within him, and he went at Ray with
renewed force. Ray saw him coming, but he underestimated the momentum his
nearly beaten opponent had mustered. Jeremy landed one punishing hit to the
boxer’s face.

The two men
circled each other. Jeremy met the boxer’s aggression with his own. Ray might
knock him out, but he would not force him to back down. Ray threw a punch at
Jeremy’s abdomen. Jeremy surprised him by blocking him and then retaliating.
His punch connected and set the boxer back a step.

Then everything
changed.

Ray’s face went
red with fury. Trainer turned fighter, and Jeremy prepared himself for what he
knew was going to be a very painful rebuttal. Heaving for air, Jeremy planted
his feet with determination. There’d been times in the past when he’d allowed
the opinions of others to hold him back.

This was not one
of those times.

Jeisa Borreto
gripped the back of a wooden chair in the dingy South Boston gym to stop
herself from hopping back into the ring. The man who called himself a trainer
was clearly on a sadistic ego trip, and Jeremy seemed not only to recognize
that fact but also to accept it.

Still, the smell
of sweat and the sound of fierce exhalations were both incredibly intimidating
and disturbingly exciting at the same time. Her own adrenaline was coursing
through her, making it impossible for her to look away even when she knew the
fight was only going to become more painful to watch.

She jumped when
Jeremy’s punch connected and Ray’s head snapped back. Normally she didn’t
condone violence, and she was definitely not a fan of this sport in particular,
and yet her heart was racing and she felt as if Jeremy’s triumph was her own.
Was this the high the Romans had sought when they pitted man against beast?
Although Jeremy’s chance for survival seemed as slim as that of a gladiator, he
blocked Ray’s next hit and landed another of his own.

Jeisa surprised
herself by cheered him on out loud. What
would my father say if he could see me now? A ghost of a smile flitted
across her lips at the thought. He’d
think I’ve finally lost my mind. He was already reeling from what he
considered her mid-twenties rebellion. She really couldn’t blame him. She’d
gone to the private schools he’d sent her to without issue. She’d even
graduated with a degree in International Relations from the University of São Paulo.
She’d been raised to follow the rules, maintain a blemish-free public persona,
and blend into the background like a beautiful painting—cherished, but silent.

Was it wrong to want more
than the comfortable life he’d given her? If her father had had his way, she’d
be married to some wealthy Brazilian businessman, spending the rest of her life
being pampered and protected.

Sheltered.

Smothered.

I
don’t want my only decisions to revolve around who will sit together at the
dinner parties I host for some highly successful and equally boring husband.

Life
has to be about more than that.

She’d decided to get a job
and show her father that she was perfectly capable of supporting herself, but
finding employment after the influential Romario Borreto made it known that he
didn’t want his daughter working wasn’t easy. Out of desperation, she’d looked
beyond the borders of Brazil and outside of her educational background. No one
was willing to take a chance on a foreign unknown—until she found an au pair
position through an international classified ad. Not her ideal job, but a way
to pay the bills until she found something better.

With her bags packed
and with an equal share of enthusiasm and naïveté, she’d flown to Boston,
imagining the hardest part of her new life would be acclimating to the cold New
England weather. She’d made many American friends at school but had lost touch
with most of them when they’d moved back to the States. Still, she’d dreamed of
living in America since she was little—Boston in particular. It was as romantic
and exotic to her as Paris.

No one would
know her. For the first time in her life she could be simply Jeisa. She didn’t
worry about being alone since she’d be living with an American family.

An ideal way to
get to know the culture while hunting for a better job.

Except for one
minor detail.

Reese David, the
man who’d hired her as a nanny for his family, hadn’t mentioned that he wasn’t
married. And, oh yes, he didn’t have any
children.

Stranded in
Boston and unwilling to call home for help, Jeisa had done what many young
people do when they apply for their first job. She’d lied.

Lied well,
apparently, because she’d landed an entry-level secretarial job at Corisi
Enterprises. But even with miles between them, her father left her little room
to breathe. He called once a day. So, unwilling to tell him about the
nonexistence of her first job, she’d lied once a day—the stories growing like
weeds between her and her father until she could no longer see a way around
them.

Too late to confess.

I should have spilled the truth before I
named the imaginary children.

Definitely before I gave them hobbies and
personalities.

If lies were
pennies, she’d surely earned her way to hell a few times over already.

I’m no better than Reese.Well, I’m not a sexual predator trying to
take advantage of women I lure away from their families with false promises—so
perhaps I’m a bit better.

Still, I’m a liar, and there is always a
price to pay for being dishonest.

Jeisa winced as
Jeremy’s brief success enraged the old fighter. Guilt weighed heavily upon her.
It’s my fault he’s here.A professional wouldn’t have allowed him to
come. But I’m not a professional—I lied about that, too. If only life were like
an Etch A Sketch that could be shaken and erased when you drew yourself into a
real mess.

I don’t want to lie anymore. I don’t want to
pretend to be someone I’m not. I thought I was better than this, stronger than
this.

Did I ever tell you about how my first
client died? Yes, he had this ridiculous idea that learning how to box would
toughen him up, so he hired a trainer and got himself killed during his first
lesson.

Why didn’t I stop him?

Well, that’s a funny story . . . one
that took Jeisa momentarily back to how she’d gotten what some might call her
third job in the United States.

“I don’t know
anything about being an image consultant,” Jeisa remembered clearly telling
Mrs. Duhamel. However, denying the matriarch of Corisi Enterprises was as
productive as telling the wind not to blow. Always impeccably dressed, she was
a maternal force of nature. She knew the names of everyone in the company’s
Boston building, and they certainly knew her. Everyone stood a little
straighter, smiled a little more pleasantly, and typed a little faster when
Mrs. Duhamel entered the room.

All that
information would have been helpful to know the first week on the job, when
Jeisa had stepped into the hallway during a break in what was a particularly
harsh, albeit well-deserved, discussion regarding her job performance.

Having typed
papers and passed her college courses, Jeisa had figured she could easily
handle an office job. And the computer programs they’d asked if she knew how to
use? Could a person be blamed for optimistically believing she’d be able to
master them before anyone noticed her complete lack of exposure to them?

Really, what was one more little lie when
you were bathing in an ocean of them already?

It was a reason
for dismissal, at least as far as her supervisor had been concerned. He’d
started a conversation that had likely been leading to her termination when
he’d been cut off by a phone call, and she’d been sent to the hallway outside
his office while he took it.

If only she
could go back in time and tell herself not to offer help to the older woman
she’d seen carrying a parcel into an elevator. I should have been fired, called my father with a confession, and
worked my way out of this malfeasance.

Instead, I’m here, watching a good man get a
beating because I haven’t worked up the nerve to tell him the truth yet.

Why did Mrs. Duhamel—Marie, Jeisa corrected herself
mid-thought—choose me to help Jeremy? Why
did I say yes? The second question was easy to answer. No one refused a
request from Marie, not even when the very formidable woman asked to be
addressed by her first name. And no one lied to her. With those sharp hazel
eyes and a few pointed questions, she’d wrung Jeisa’s life story and every last
embarrassing truth out of her. Right down to lying about her job
qualifications. Instead of firing her, Marie had laid a sympathetic hand on
hers and ordered tea, and a friendship was born.

A friendship
that had changed everything, even things she hadn’t wanted to change.

Her supervisor
no longer cared when she couldn’t complete a project; instead, he would ask
others to input the files he’d assigned her, replacing that work with typing.
On one hand it was a relief to be given a job she could do. On the other, it
distanced her from her coworkers, whose once-friendly banter evaporated in
response to the preferential treatment she now received. They never voiced
their resentment outright, however, and Jeisa doubted they ever would. Marie
wielded more influence with her friendly visits than most men did when they
boomed orders.

Otherwise alone,
Jeisa found comfort in Marie’s friendship. They started having lunch together
whenever she was in town. With Marie’s support, Jeisa started to think she’d be
able to turn things around. She could make it. She hadn’t done anything so
awful that it couldn’t be repaired. She just needed a little more time.

So when Marie
had asked Jeisa for help, refusing hadn’t felt like an option. All she had to
say was that she was an image consultant.One more small fabrication and she’d have a real shot at being independent.
An enormous increase in salary, an opportunity to travel and build a résumé
that wasn’t based on a fictitious employment history. Oh yes . . . and no more typing.

Until now, Jeisa
hadn’t felt bad about deceiving Jeremy. She’d felt qualified. Her background
had prepared her to teach him how to blend in with the wealthy. And today she’d
been proud of his transformation.

Moments like
this were payback for tempting fate with the question—What could go wrong?

Sorry, Marie, I broke the first client you
sent me—next, please?

Jeisa gripped
the back of the chair so tightly that her knuckles whitened. She welcomed the
discomfort. Marie hired me to help him
and look at me—just watching instead of doing what I know is right and putting
an end to this.

Jeisa cringed as
the trainer stopped toying with her client and his next hit crumpled Jeremy to
the ring’s padded floor.

“Stay down,” the
trainer barked, but Jeremy was already pushing himself up off the floor and
back onto his knees.

Jeisa nervously
chewed her bottom lip. He’s going to get
killed.Why won’t he just stay down?

Jeisa held her
breath as, with heartbreaking effort, Jeremy struggled to stand. He wobbled. He
faltered. Eventually, he straightened and raised his gloved hands in front of
him again.

Ray pulled back
as if he were about to deliver a final, deadly blow. Jeremy swayed but said
nothing. Blood dripped from his nose onto the mat below as the two men stared
each other down.

Jeisa took a
step toward the ring. An indelicate amount of wrath filled her. If he hits Jeremy again, that old man had
better run, because I’m going kill him.

“You don’t give
up,” Ray said in recognition and expelled a harsh breath. He lowered his hands
and began to remove his gloves.

Jeremy lowered
his own and stumbled as his legs gave way a bit beneath him. Relief flooded
through Jeisa. She grabbed a clean white towel from a bag near the ring and
rushed to Jeremy’s side. She slid beneath one of his arms and took his weight
on her shoulders, wiping the blood from his chin with the towel. Jeremy took
the towel from her and held it to his nose.

The trainer
sized them both up again and asked, “You sure you’re not his girlfriend?”

Jeisa said some
choice words in rapid Portuguese.

The trainer held
one of the ropes up so that Jeisa could maneuver Jeremy out of the ring more
easily. He said to Jeremy, “Be here Tuesday morning at eight.” Jeremy nodded.
“But leave her home.”

Jeremy chuckled
and groaned. “I’ll try.”

Jeisa glared at
him as she helped him remove his gloves and wraps.

Men.

Together they
made their way across the gym toward the exit. Jeremy’s dark blue eyes were
dancing with triumph and a wave of attraction hit her like a sucker punch. When
they’d first met, the description that had come to mind had been earnestly adorable. Had it really been
only a few months since she’d met him? Gone were the old clothes, the unruly
mop of brown hair, and the boyish expressions. Even his gray sweats and
matching T-shirt were from a modern athletic-wear designer Jeisa had
discovered.

Not that fashion
had done much to aid Jeremy this day.

He paused and
shook his head. Jeisa slid beneath one of his arms again to help steady him.
The heat from his body spread like wildfire through her own. Jeremy was all man
now, and Jeisa could feel how much he’d changed in every place that their
bodies touched. The strong arm draped across her shoulders no longer felt like
it belonged to a man who spent his life behind a computer. Boxing was only a
small piece of Jeremy’s plan to physically transform himself. He’d started
running and lifting weights very soon after they’d met. Jeisa hadn’t thought it
was necessary . . . But oh, the results
were nice.

He stumbled as
they walked. Her hand flew up to steady him, coming to a rest in the middle of
his hard chest, and she felt him catch his breath.

Is he thinking what I’m thinking?

No, no, no, she thought frantically.

Unlike me, Jeremy has always been painfully
honest.

Remember that he’s doing all of this to win
the heart of a woman.

Another woman.

As in, not me.

Her body didn’t
care. She looked past the swelling and the blood and all she could see were his
beautiful, sexy blue eyes. They paused for what seemed an eternity and she
couldn’t look away.

What would it be like to be loved by a man
who is willing to do anything to win your heart?

You could be yourself with such a man.

Love like that doesn’t follow the rules.

It is sweaty, and passionate, and the stuff
that romances are made of.

An odd
expression entered Jeremy’s eyes and he straightened away from her, breaking
contact. “Jeisa,” he said in a gruff voice, “let’s go home.”

“Yes,” she said,
and chastised herself for entertaining such thoughts about her employer. She
was part of Jeremy’s life.

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About Me

I live on a small farm in Northern Rhode Island with my husband, three children, three dogs, two horses, one barn cat and an assortment of chickens. If there is a happier place on Earth, I haven't found it.